Stars become a diamond's best friend in row over warzone film

Wearing a diamond ring, Beyoncé Knowles arrives for last week's Golden Globes in Beverley Hills. The industry paid $10,000 to a charity in return for the publicity. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

At first glance it is standard Hollywood red carpet fare: A-list celebrities such as Beyoncé Knowles and Jennifer Lopez brandishing their diamond jewellery for the cameras. But there is much more to these photocalls than mere fashion statement.

The stars are part of a multimillion-dollar campaign by the industry to head off a potential public relations disaster in the form of a new Hollywood film that portrays the gemstones as a warlord's best friend. Blood Diamond, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and is set during Sierra Leone's diamond-fuelled civil war, has its British premiere tomorrow night.

Knowles and Lopez agreed to wear jewel-encrusted rings on their right hands at last week's Golden Globes award ceremony in return for the promise from the diamond industry of $10,000 each to the African charity of their choice.

Other Hollywood stalwarts are being approached to promote diamonds at the Academy Awards next month. But the industry's campaign - titled Raise Your Right Hand - does not stop at the movie industry.

The title track of the new film was recorded by the rapper Nas, raising fears that it could tarnish the appeal of diamonds among bling-wearing hip-hop fans. So De Beers, which has a 40% share of the global diamond market, responded by enlisting the public support of the founder of Def Jam records, Russell Simmons.

He was flown to Botswana and given a tour of Jwaneng, the world's most lucrative mine. The move appears to have worked. On his return, Simmons launched a new jewellery collection with a Fairtrade-style pledge to donate a share of the profits to Africa. He also made a swipe at the movie in an open letter that spoke of "old stereotypical images of an underdeveloped, self-destructive, savage Africa" that could hinder rather than aid the continent.

Blood Diamond, in which DiCaprio plays a South African mercenary who goes on a quest for a rare pink diamond, had sent shivers through the industry. But now some insiders are suggesting that its campaign has been so effective that the movie has turned out to be a blessing in disguise, creating a PR opportunity that has boosted sales.

De Beers releases annual results next month, but early indications suggest that gemstone sales in the US went up after the film came out there. "The good diamonds do for Africa is tremendous," said a spokesman for De Beers, which has a 40% share of the global market. "Schools have been built by diamonds, roads have been tarmacked by diamonds."

But the movie has provoked bitterness between the industry and pressure groups, who say the Raise Your Right Hand initiative has distasteful echoes of Sierra Leone's civil war, in which rebels used amputation to terrorise civilians. "It's rather disgusting if you think about Sierra Leone and the hands that got hacked off there," said Alex Yearsley, campaigner for Global Witness. "It's an attempt to hit back at the film. You can imagine the PR campaign that came up with it. But the industry didn't do much for the Sierra Leonean women with no right hand when all this was going on."

Benefits

Campaigners including Amnesty International will today demand that the diamond companies clean up their act. Botswana is the industry's pin-up: an example of industrialised mining in a stable country that has brought demonstrable benefits. But the pressure groups draw attention to the risks faced by informal miners scrabbling for gems in riverbeds in countries such as Sierra Leone and Congo, which are still scarred by recent civil wars.

Nick Dearden, campaigns manager for Amnesty International, said: "If you look at the big diamond areas of Sierra Leone, of Congo, they still have no electricity, no running water, no paved roads. If you look at the whole picture, Africans have not benefited a great deal and they've suffered enormously."

Campaigners have not called for a boycott. Instead, they say customers should question retailers to be sure that the diamonds they buy are conflict-free. Congo, Angola and Sierra Leone made up between 4% and 15% of the global trade when those countries' wars were at their height in the late 1990s. The industry says fewer than 1% of diamonds on the market now are from warzones, though critics say this is still too much.

Rory Anderson, a senior policy adviser for Africa at the charity World Vision, said: "Diamonds are a $60bn-a-year business, and even if only 1% of the retail market includes gems that fuel conflicts in African nations, that's $600m worth of cheap assault rifles and rocket launchers killing thousands of people every year."